Many iPad 2 owners have waited almost a full year for this moment, and it has finally come. Both the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S now have their own bona fide jailbreak tool in Absinthe A5. To be clear, Absinthe A5 is an untethered jailbreak method - this is the one you want, otherwise you have to have your iOS device connected to your Mac or PC with a cable whenever it boots up. This has no such requirement.

iOS hacker p0sixninja says that the jailbreak software works for A5 devices that are running iOS 5.0 and iOS 5.0.1. If you've updated to the iOS 5.1 beta, then you're out of luck if you wanna jailbreak. Your best bet might be to downgrade. To get started, you'll need to download the latest version of greenpois0n, and it currently only works on a Mac (Windows is "coming soon".) The specific builds that are supported are iPhone 4S with iOS 5.0 build 9A334 and iOS 5.0.1 builds 9A405 and 9A406, as well as iPad 2 running iOS 5.0.1 build 9A405.

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One of the key differences between the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S is the availability of Siri on the newer smartphone. There have been a few hacks and allegedly legal options that put Siri on older versions of the iPhone, but nothing officially sanctioned by Apple.

The latest Siri workaround comes from iOS hackers Grant Paul, known as chpwn, and Ryan Petrich. In a recent blog post, the duo unveiled Spire, which is a "new tool for installing Siri on previously unsupported, but jailbroken, devices," Paul said. As you might recall, an iOS 5 jailbreak was just released.

The 100MB download is available via Cydia and it will add Siri to any device running iOS 5.

If that sounds a bit too good to be true, though, it is. Actually getting Siri to work on a device other than the iPhone 4S will require some technical know-how.

If you're running iOS 5.0.1 and have been waiting for the ability to jailbreak your device without being tethered to a computer, today is your lucky day (as long as you aren't hoping to jailbreak the iPhone 4S or iPad 2!) The Chronic Dev Team and iPhone Dev Team have jointly released a new version of redsn0w that will jailbreak the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and third- and fourth-generation iPod touch running iOS 5.0.1. Users who are already running the tethered version of the jailbreak can download Corona from Cydia to get in on the untethered action. An untethered jailbreak for the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S is still being worked on, with no set timetable for arrival.

In other iOS 5 jailbreak news, a new "Spire" hack now allows you to install Siri on jailbroken iOS devices as well!

We have previously highlighted the exploits of the iPhone hacking community in its attempts to break Siri's exclusivity to the iPhone 4S. And while various device modders have been successful at getting the application itself ported over to devices like Apple's iPhone 4 and iPod touch, they didn't manage to address the elephant in the room: How to get Siri to work with Apple's servers, which don't seem to allow requests from unauthorized (non-iPhone 4S) devices.

Two hackers have since discovered the secret Siri sauce, but neither has spilled the beans as to exactly how their non-iPhone 4S Siri app works. According to Steve Troughton-Smith, however, the tweak was built using a single line of code and "a ton of filesystem changes." And as long as a user first jailbreaks his or her device before installing the to-be-released tweak, Siri is unlocked with no restrictions on its use: It works with the same speed and speech recognition as its iPhone 4S counterpart.

If you've never jailbroken your iOS device before and have been wondering what all the fuss is about, the video above is a great indicator of the things you can do once you free your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from the locked up clutches of Apple restrictions. In fact, even if you're a part of the jailbreak community, you may find some great tools here as well. This video gives you a quick walkthrough of thirty different jailbreak tools that you can use to make your devices more productive and more fun. Give it a look.

JailbreakMe is back with version 3.0, and if you've been wanting to jailbreak your iPad 2, now's your chance. If you're unfamiliar, JailbreakMe is a super-easy way of jailbreaking your iOS devices. All you need to do is head to jailbreakme.com and follow the simple instructions, and a minute later you'll be able to customize, theme, tweak, and install any iOS software that you please. The only trick here is that you can't be running the iOS 5 beta. Other than that, you're clear to go ahead and make it happen.

Apple has reportedly changed a part of iOS 5 to make it impossible for iPhone users to downgrade their phone's firmware, even if they'd rather run an earlier version.

The iPhone Dev Team, a well-known group of iPhone hackers, first discovered the change in an unlocked developer's version of iOS 5, which is expected to be released this fall.

Normally, to restore your iPhone to an earlier version, you'd save "SHSH blobs" (which are like digital signatures to authenticate software) at a specific timestamp and use a third-party app to restore your firmware back to that time. The SHSH blobs are static and can be used as often as you like.

But the team found that in iOS 5, Apple has prevented people from being able to save these blobs for a specific timestamp. Instead, Apple will re-assign your phone a new SHSH blob each time your reboot your device in jailbreak mode, making saved blobs irrelevant since Apple can just reject ones that were saved.

For anyone who decided to give up their jailbroken version of iOS in order to upgrade to the iOS 5 beta, you're about to get the best of both worlds again. Using Redsn0w 0.9.8b1 on the Mac, you can perform a tethered jailbreak that let's you bring Cydia and all the jailbreak apps into the iOS 5 fold. Of course, being a tethered solution, this means you'll need to plug in your device if you need it to be rebooted, which means we're personally gonna wait until the untethered option is available.

If you're waiting for a jailbreak before updating to iOS 4.3.3, you might be happy to know that redsn0w 0.9.6b15 will do the trick. This is the same untethered jailbreak that we've seen since iOS 4.3.1, which we don't mind at all. Just download the latest version of redsn0w, and go for it. This'll work with iPhone, iPod touch, and first-gen iPad. iPad 2 is still being fairly unreasonable about allowing itself to be jailbroken for the time being.

Apple will fix bugs and address security issues on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch with the release of iOS 4.3.2 in about two weeks, according to Boy Genius Report.

The latest in what's becoming a regular schedule of tweaks to Apple's mobile operating system will also include a few unspecified "enhancements," BGR wrote Thursday, citing "one of our Apple ninjas."

The last update to the operating system, iOS 4.3.1, arrived in late March.

The news doesn't indicate whether iOS 4.3.2 will fix vulnerabilities that allowed hackers to jailbreak iOS 4.3.1, or the iPad 2 just days after it was released. One managed to get Cydia running on the device and another exploited a flaw in Apple's Safari mobile Web browser that may have been fixed without comment from Apple.